As I purchased some fruit the other night I thought I should use it before it went off! As a result I tried a number of fruit pictures.
At first I tried shooting each piece of fruit separately, I even got the macro lens out and zoomed in really close. The pictures were nice but weren’t great, the big problem was I think a lack of color. But when I added all the different fruits together the picture kind of popped. It still has that minimalistic look, simple fruit on white, but the colors (reds, blacks and whites) worked well together. (The green leaves on the strawberry also helped).
So I liked this one and chose it for this evenings post.
Really no post processing here, this is exactly what came out of the camera.
Our Halo heros this evening are reaching for the sky and trying to fly around the house! I think Carter is planning on shooting Buck into the air using the launcher!
I really wanted to try something different tonight. I’ve been taking a lot of Landscape shots recently, and while I love that genre, I think I need to try new things. Now I would do more portraits, but other than my family, I’d have to go out and actually find someone to shoot, and to be completely honest, I’m just too lazy. As a result I have lots of family shots but not much else. (Need to do something about that).
Anyway, for tonight I thought I’d try food photography. Never tried this before so this is a complete experiment. I didn’t know what I wanted to shoot so I went to QFC and walked around with a basket looking for something interesting. Oh sure I brought fruit (every kind of berry) but I was still looking for something new. Then I found these peppers. I immediately thought they would look great on white paper (loved the red and orange colors) so I grabbed a handful and rushed home.
Then I spent two hours setting up food shots. I played around with these peppers first, then did some berry shots, dropped some strawberry’s in water and finished with food coloring. Phew!
I’m pretty pleased with the results (for a first attempt) but ended the night with pepper burns in my nose (don’t cut peppers then pick your nose – huge mistake), and food dye all over my fingers (red and green, my hands look like a Christmas Tree).
After my shoot the Halo guys found the peppers with terrible results! Apparently they are pretty hot!
I found these flowers in QFC and had to buy them (my god I’m getting old). Anyway they looked fantastic and had this amazing blue color. Lisa thinks they have been dyed blue – which is possible, but I still think they look fab.
Working hard to entertain the family the Halo guys demonstrated what they learned in the army.
Today was wet, snow melting and rain failing, so I thought I’d try something else. I happened to see Abi looking out the Window and thought it would make a nice picture.
By the time I got out lights, the rain stopped, so I had to ask James to join me in the garden and point the garden hose at the window! The picture came out ok though.
Interestingly, since I have been posting images I’ve had a number of questions from people about Photoshop. So I thought I should comment.
Every single professional image that’s posted anywhere is Photoshoped. From magazines to billboards, post processing is here to stay. Now some people say that this doesn’t count as photography and consider it “cheating”. But even the famous Ansel Adams was a king in the darkroom and spent hours perfecting “dodging and burning” while images developed. Today, he would do this in Photoshop.
So what kind of things do I do in Photoshop? The answer depends on the image. At a minimum, every picture is sharpened and color corrected so it accurately represents what I saw. If necessary I can change everything, from color, tone, exposure, brightness and noise reduction to lens and distortion correction. If that’s not enough I can remove blemishes and wrinkles, smooth skin and even re-sculpture a face or body. I can also remove distractions and composite a fake image from multiple parts.
At the end of the day the goal is to create an image that draws you in, makes you think and insights some kind of emotion.
In reality I’m still learning how to do all this well. I have some successes but shoot thousands of images for a few nice ones (literally). And to be honest there are very few I personally like.
So what can’t Photoshop do? Well it can’t create a good composition if one wasn’t captured and it can’t regain complete darkness or blown out highlights. So you have to know what you’re doing with the camera in the first-place and know how to use ambient light and how to augment or replace it with your own.
Hopefully at the end of the day you end up with a picture that looks great.
Today’s image was sharpened and I added a small vignette (to make the corners a little darker and draw you in). Hope you like it.
We went out for Mexican tonight and I had a Margarita. I turned my back for 30 seconds and found this scene…
I guess everyone has their favorite flower, for me it’s the Gerbera. I’ve taken quite a few pictures of these flowers in the past, I even have a shot of a pink one blown up on canvas in my family room over the file.
I love the symmetrical nature of the flower and the over abundance of petals make it, I think the perfect flower subject.
For this image I wanted to change the lighting, so I shot this is a small softbox, making sure there were plenty of shadows behind the petals. The composition of the flower is deliberate, it’s considered “uninteresting” to place a subject in the center of the screen so this flower centers around phi supporting the golden ratio – basically just off center – (I won’t bore you with composition science, I save that for Lisa 🙂
Back out into the snow, this time to make a snowman.
